Personal hygiene, such as beard trimming, electric shaving, hair cutting and styling, and other body hair grooving and removal methods generate loose and falling hair. Fallen hair often creates undesirable conditions (e.g., unclean, unsanitary, difficult to clean) wherever these grooming activities occur, particularly on, around and within, for example, countertops, sink basins, or the like. Many men prefer to wear mustaches or beards, and well-groomed men keep their facial hair trimmed and neat in appearance. Self-grooming is generally accomplished using scissors, electric razors or trimmers and a mirror. Since mirrors are widely available in bathrooms, typically mounted above a sink basin, men often use these bathroom mirrors to trim their mustaches or beards and use the sink basin to catch the trimmings. These trimmings cause untidy conditions in and around the sink and/or contribute to clogged drains.
Numerous devices have been invented for the purpose of trapping falling pieces of hair. Unfortunately, these devices are generally bulky, uncomfortable to use, and difficult or inconvenient to store. Some devices are disposable, intended for a single or minimal number of uses, whereby the device is disposed of after use, while others are re-usable. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,054,124 discloses a disposable device designed to be worn by a person to catch trimmings falling from that person during a hair cut. U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,892,909, 4,689,830 and 6,401,246 disclose functionally similar but non-disposable type devices. These prior art devices generally include a neck band that encircles the entire neck and a cape assembly that is large and bulky connected to the neck band. These devices are worn about the neck of the person being groomed, and cover a large part of the person wearing the device. Thus, these devices are often hot and uncomfortable, and due to a lack of arm holes or sleeves, restrict the person's ability to groom him or herself. When self-grooming, these devices often fail in accomplishing the goal of collecting the falling hair when the person leans over to approach a mirror and causes the drape to swing, dropping any collected hair and causing the drape to miss the falling hair. Thus, these prior art devices are better suited to situations where the person is being groomed by someone else.
Personal grooming devices have also been proposed for covering or protecting a sink basin, as opposed to being worn on the person. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 5,991,942 is directed to a disposable device which covers a sink to keep liquid and debris off the sink and out of the drain. U.S. Pat. No. 2,817,851 describes a similar disposable device aimed at protecting the user from unsanitary conditions on the sink surfaces. Finally, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0201840 discloses a disposable “sink cape” aimed at “dry use” and catching hair trimmings from beard trimming or shaving with an electric razor. Notably, each of these disclosures teach openings in the cover for penetration by the sink's faucet handles and/or faucet, and thus allow debris to land on the penetrating fixtures and to fall through the openings provided. Additionally, they are all disposable devices that would require the user to continuously replace the device after each use.
Thus, while the prior art devices have attempted to address the problem of catching falling hair during personal grooming, they have not met the needs of consumers who desire a product that can be mounted within a bathroom of a home, hotel or the like as a permanent aesthetically appealing fixture. Paramount among such needs is a grooming drape that is self-contained and re-usable. The device should completely protect the area in front of a person during hair grooming, such as for example, the countertop, sink basin, or the like; and upon completion of self-grooming, facilitate easy collection and removal of the fallen hair.